The Associated Press reports that a "notorious South Korean facility that kidnapped, abused and enslaved children and the disabled for a generation was also shipping children overseas for adoption, part of a massive profit-seeking enterprise that thrived by exploiting those trapped within its walls." According to the article, the facility, known as Brothers Home, was "part of an orphanage pipeline feeding the demand of private adoption agencies."
The AP investigation confirmed that at least 19 children were adopted abroad from Brothers Home, and indicates that 51 more such adoptions likely occurred between 1979 and 1986. The government-sponsored facility also housed "thousands of children and adults that authorities deemed 'vagrants,'" says the article. Many of these children and adults suffered incredible abuses in the home.
The home also actively separated children from their families for purposes of adoption. "During that period, South Korea’s ruling military dictatorships aggressively institutionalized and exported poor children for profit and to clear the streets of those considered socially unacceptable. In Brothers’ heyday, adoptions brought the country as much as $20 million a year by some estimates."